Pakistan is a developing country and has a very strong family system. In the current economic situation of Pakistan, every family needs at least two earning members to meet their expenses i.e. both male and female. My focus is mainly on the females or I may quote working women.
Pakistan is a patriarchal society, and working women are always an easy target. They face insult, harassment, character assassination, and whatnot. Moreover, it is extremely sad and heart-wrenching to witness that our country is becoming morally debased day by day. It is 2023 today but women are not given their basic rights. What rights are we talking about, they are not even respected. Unfortunately, it is the bitter reality that successful women are not respected, they are not even accepted by many. In our society, people can not even tolerate the success of women. Even if we look into marriage proposals etc. everyone wants a doctor’s daughter-in-law but not many will allow her to practice it or do a job. These are the double standards of our society which we really need to thoroughly check once again.
Keeping in mind all of this I’ll be highlighting an issue that took place very recently where some of the female actresses of Pakistan were targeted and baseless accusations were made against them by a person named Maj (Retd) Adil Raja on his YouTube channel. The actresses were defamed and their character was assassinated. However, I’ll be appreciating that they did take a stand against this and spoke up regarding such allegations not only this but the government of Pakistan also took notice of what happened and the Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb urged the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to take legal actions against those who were part of the character assassination of the female actors.
The point is that we are living in the 21st century and I feel it’s high time today that women should be respected and appreciated for their efforts. Women comprise half of Pakistan’s population and they are surely not meant to be humiliated in any way. Women in all professions work very hard and in extremely difficult situations and we must respect that.
I’ll be quoting another example of all the chaos and harassment that women faced on the 3rd day of the 10th edition of Karachi Eat held on 8th January 2023. It was nothing but a disaster. We need to look into all such incidents that are happening on daily basis around us which are resulting in making the lives of women difficult.
Thus, we need to revisit our values and should raise better boys, and better men. We as a society need to interfere when our sons and brothers are becoming the very men from whom we want our daughters and sisters to be safe from. We need to teach people (especially men) to respect women, ‘ALL WOMEN’, not just the ones connected to them. Women are the future of Pakistan and they should be treated properly.
